datafying public sphere : fragmented audience , ùmedia and democracy

Participatory Culture& New Media 2013

by mlhradio

Datafying the public sphere?Fragmented audiences, media and democracy

Mirko Tobias Schäfer @mirkoschaefer

Assistant Professor for New Media & Digital Culture,Utrecht University

Principal Investigator, Utrecht Data School

Participatory Culture& New Media 2013Various degrees of connectedness, publicnessand privacy

Direct personal sphere

Extended networked sphere

Trans/national public sphere


Low threshold for participation

- often gratis (free as in 'free beer')

- easy to use interfaces

- social graph & social lock-in

- implicit participation explicit participation→


by Marcin Wichary

Datafying audiences and interactions

Utrecht Data School is a platform for research with and about data. We investigate datafication, and analyze and visualize data.

UDS connects teaching, hands-on practice and scholarship.

www.dataschool.nl

Participatory Culture& New Media 2013Collecting, selling & using data

Participatory Culture& New Media 2013Every click you make, every Tweet you send...

Wherever people are talking, clicking, typingabout our brand,

Mission Control is here to listen...(Gatorade)

Utrecht (fragmented Twitter audiences)

Thomas Boeschoten, 2013

Utrecht (fragmented Twitter audiences)

Thomas Boeschoten, 2013

Public Service Announcement:

Just because they look likebubbles, does not meanthey are filter bubbles!

NL Refugee debate on Twitter NL, P. Verhaar & T. Boeschoten, 2015

NL Refugee debate on Twitter NL, P. Verhaar & T. Boeschoten, 2015

Right-wing →

Media →

← Centre/ left wing Belgium centre / left

Belgium right-wing


Prototype of a Twitter Monitor, 2014

Participatory Culture& New Media 2013Challenges of a datafied public sphere

1) new 'quality' of captured conversations, views, opinions

2) data (context, ownership, re-use)

3) analysis (models and algorithms)

Participatory Culture& New Media 2013Defending the open society!

Participatory Culture& New Media 2013Revisiting data practices and their impact

→ how is our understanding of the 'public' changing?

→ how inform technologies our knowledge development?

→ how to defend or further democratic values?

Participatory Culture& New Media 2013What can Public Service Media do?

- stop talking about the “big data revolution”,start explaining data practices!

- inform the electorate about models, algorithmsand their social impact

- stimulate and host society-wide & political debateon datafication & algorithms

Participatory Culture& New Media 2013Whose to blame for Trump?

Filter bubbles

Fake news

Algorithms

Participatory Culture& New Media 2013People in this country have had enough of experts (Former UK Justice Secretary Michael Gove, June 2016)

by Gage Skidmore

We brought fact checkers to a culture war.Time to get serious

(Clay Shirky, 22.7.2016)

Participatory Culture& New Media 2013Where is the European public sphere?

- translating national media (print, radio, TV)for EU-wide distribution & commentary

→ creating pan-European media platforms

→ (public) European social media?


@mirkoschaefer

www.mtschaefer.net


Tweets & viewing figures; Van Es, Boeschoten, Van Geenen, 2015


Overlapping audiences on Twitter; Van Es, Boeschoten, Van Geenen, 2015

Participatory Culture& New Media 2013A few recommendations (introductory level)

datafying public sphere : fragmented audience , ùmedia and democracy

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